Many of the candidates for elected office in Michigan are unprepared for even the simplest questions, such as 'Why are you running?' / Photo illustration from Detroit Free Press file ph

Detroit Free Press Columnist

So I’ve spent most of my summer interviewing candidates for elected office — roughly a quarter-million of them would be my guess, although to be honest, I lost count sometime around Independence Day — and before I say anything else, I’d like to express my admiration for each of them.

In a country where 4 in 5 adults don’t even bother to vote in most elections, I’m always a little astonished at the dwindling but dogged minority of you who choose to plunk down your filing fees, print up some lawn signs and submit yourselves to the thankless, time-sucking and not infrequently humiliating exercise that is retail politicking.

Sure, a few of you would have been better off investing the money in competent psychiatric care, which has the advantage of being confidential.

But then you would have missed out on all the perks that Theodore Roosevelt noted were reserved exclusively for “the man in the arena” (although if you read the actual speech from which Roosevelt’s famous phrase is excerpted, those perks appear to consist mainly of frequent opportunities to get dirty, sweaty and bloodied, which is the sort of thing successful people tend to avoid).

Also, you probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be interviewed by me and my Editorial Board colleagues — the very people Teddy Roosevelt had in mind, I imagine, when he talked about “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

So hats off to you, brave uber-citizens of the campaign trail, and please accept the following observations about your breed in the spirit of admiration and humility in which they’re offered.

First principles

“Why are you running?”

That’s the first question I ask most seekers of elective office, and the only thing more striking than the utter lack of journalistic imagination it reveals is how many candidates seem not to have fashioned a serviceable answer.

A surprising number volunteer that running for office is something they “always wanted to try,” like Bikram yoga or raw oysters, although few of these candidates can explain why an entire legislative district would wish to accompany them on their journey of self-discovery.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that the menu of human motives is, at bottom, pretty limited. We’re all looking to be loved, redeemed, vindicated or otherwise remembered for what we accomplished before we are shuffled off this mortal coil.

But if they are serious about getting elected, candidates should take the time to cobble together some pithy variation on one of these themes, ideally one that has been whittled to 30 seconds or less and avoids any reference to the feelings of inadequacy that the candidate has been seeking to exorcise ever since the only girl he ever really loved left town on the back of his best friend’s Harley.

Campaign literacy

I’m similarly struck by the number of candidates who believe it would be imprudent, or even impossible, to venture answers to vexing questions (such as how to pay for roads, or whether to build a new bridge to Canada or raise the minimum wage) until they’re actually elected and have the opportunity “to get in there and see what’s really going on.”

Those who are afforded this opportunity are inevitably disappointed to discover that 1) There’s no magic briefing book for incoming office-holders, and that 2) Many incumbents are as clueless as they are when it comes to knowing where tax dollars come from and how they are spent (although most of the relevant information is easily accessible via the modern marvel that one memorable office-seeker called “the intertubes”).

No one expects candidates to memorize every line item in the state budget. Still, it’s useful to know whether a tax he or she proposes to abolish is generating $1 million a year or 100 times that much, or that the savings achieved by “cutting food stamp payments to everyone who drives a Cadillac” will probably fall short of the $1.6 billion Gov. Rick Snyder says is needed to keep the state’s roads in good repair.

The bad news is how little many legislative candidates know about the $50-billion-a-year business they’re itching to get their hands on; the good news is that they can look up most of what they need to know — even before they’re elected!

The best we've got

I don’t mean to suggest that the typical candidate is clueless; to the contrary, many first-time office-seekers are considerably better-informed and more earnest in their search for creative solutions, than the experienced incumbents they seek to replace.

Especially in the term-limited world that we Michiganders live in, experience and expertise are relative things. And most of those who bother to vote Tuesday will have the opportunity to elect candidates who have done their homework and are looking forward to the challenges of elective office, as well as its perquisites.

But if you find yourself staring at one of those ballot lines that seems to offer only a choice between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, remember: You could have volunteered for the job yourself.

Tuesday, as ever, the job of running the world will fall to those who show up.